Overview of Office Telemetry

Summary: Learn about Office Telemetry, the new compatibility monitoring framework that works with Office 2013, Office 2007, and Office 2003.

Audience: IT Professionals

Office Telemetry is a new compatibility monitoring framework that can speed up Office deployments by helping you discover business-critical Office documents and solutions in your organization. In this article, you can learn more about the tools that work with Office Telemetry, the kinds of documents and solutions that are monitored, and how telemetry data is collected. You can also learn about navigating the dashboard and managing add-ins and privacy settings.

Office Telemetry is a new compatibility monitoring framework that replaces the Office 2010 compatibility tools Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM), Office Code Compatibility Inspector (OCCI), and Office Environment Assessment Tool (OEAT). When you use Office Telemetry as part of the modern Office compatibility process, which is described in the Assess Office 2013 compatibility, it helps you minimize the time that you spend assessing Office compatibility. It also reduces the risks of an Office upgrade.

Office Telemetry in Office 2013 works as follows: When an Office document or solution is loaded, used, closed, or raises an error in certain Office 2013 applications, the application adds a record about the event to a local data store. Each record includes a description of the problem and a link to more information. Inventory and usage data is also tracked.

How does Office Telemetry work in earlier versions of Office? Office Telemetry is new for Office 2013, so it’s not built into Office 2003, Office 2007, and Office 2010. For those clients, you deploy an agent that collects information about the installed add-ins and the most recently used documents. You won’t get application event data for these clients like you do with Office 2013 clients, but you'll get inventory and usage data that helps you discover what is being used and likely important to your business.

Is installed with Office Professional Plus 2013 and Office 365 ProPlus

Connects to the local data store on the client

The following table describes the components of Office Telemetry. The first two components shown below are required for both Telemetry Log and Telemetry Dashboard. The remaining components that are listed are applicable only to Telemetry Dashboard. These components collect telemetry data from across an organization so that you can view it by using Telemetry Dashboard. To learn how to deploy these components, see Deploy Telemetry Dashboard and Plan for Telemetry Dashboard topology and hardware.

This solution type includes earlier versions of Excel-supported Automation add-ins, which are built upon COM add-ins. Functions in Automation add-ins can be called from formulas in Excel worksheets.

Excel XLL add-ins

Excel 2013

XLL add-ins (.xll) are specific to Excel and are built with any compiler that supports building DLLs (dynamic-link libraries). They do not have to be installed or registered. XLL add-ins also include DLLs that contain user-defined commands and functions.

Excel XLS RTD add-ins

Excel 2013

XLS real-time data (RTD) add-ins are Excel worksheets that use the RealTimeData worksheet function to call an Automation server to retrieve data in real-time.

Word WLL add-ins

Word 2013

WLL (.wll) add-ins are specific to Word and built with any compiler that supports building DLLs.

The following table describes and illustrates how data collection is triggered and the flow of data between the Telemetry Agents and Telemetry Dashboard. You can view a more detailed diagram in the Office Telemetry poster.

Steps in the data collection process

Step

Description

Users log on and trigger the Telemetry Agent scheduled task

Users log on and trigger the scheduled task that uploads telemetry data. The agent waits 10 minutes for logon processes to complete, and then the agent waits for a random number of minutes, up to 4 hours, before it starts the upload process.

After the initial upload, the agent uploads telemetry data every 8 hours. Mobile or offline clients upload data when users log on when the connection is restored.

After all components are deployed and you connect Telemetry Dashboard to the telemetry database, new worksheets are added to display telemetry information about documents, solutions, and other information. The navigation pane on the left side of the Telemetry Dashboard window is the primary way to navigate through the worksheets in the dashboard. You can also use the navigation pane to change the data range and label filters. The following video shows how to navigate in the dashboard.

Short video about Telemetry Dashboard navigation

To learn more about the worksheets in Telemetry Dashboard, visit these resources:

Custom reporting and database schema reference for Telemetry Dashboard helps you create custom reports in Telemetry Dashboard using a PivotTable report. Custom reports can help you customize how telemetry data is displayed for different business purposes. For example, you can view all Warning errors for Excel in a certain business group, create a list of all solutions that use unregistered ActiveX controls, and more.

If an add-in is crashing or takes a long time to load, you can disable the add-in for all Office 2013 clients. Use the Add-in management worksheet to generate a Group Policy Object script that sets the configuration state of add-ins that are used with Office 2013. The following screen shot displays the Add-in Management worksheet.

User interface for managing add-ins in Telemetry Dashboard

By using the Group Policy Administrative Templates, you can also create lists of managed add-ins and optionally block any add-in that isn’t on the list. Users can’t override these settings unless you allow them to.

Telemetry Dashboard displays the file names and titles of documents in each user’s Most Recently Used list, which might reveal personal or confidential information about the user or organization. The names of add-ins and other solutions that are used by Office are also displayed. In Manage privacy settings in Telemetry Dashboard, you can learn about Telemetry Dashboard settings that help you protect user privacy by disguising file names and titles or by preventing data for selected applications or solutions from being reported.

The following image provides a quick overview of the three methods that Telemetry Dashboard provides to help you protect user privacy.